Monday, July 21, 2014

Weekend Things: Whirlwind

Saturday morning, I dropped M and his guitar equipment off outside of a bar in downtown Hallowell, and then wended my way through parade reroutes and bridge-out detours out of town and to a small nature preserve in Litchfield. There I joined a group of people in chasing down butterflies as part of my Master Naturalist training.

Clouded sulfur

Great spangled fritillary

Cute beetle.

Silver-spotted skipper

Cute damselfly

When we finished, I raced back to Hallowell, where I caught the end of the second Rock Camp group's set and, happily, all of M's group's set.

Blah, Blah, Blah performing Green Day's "American Idiot"

After a quick lemonade on the waterfront, I hurried home, showered and changed, and headed back into town, where I med a friend and drove down to Brunswick for dinner and the commencement ceremonies for the students graduating this semester from my grad school program.

The whole day felt kind of disjointed--chasing butterflies, rocking out in a bar, talking writing and books, listening to inspiring speeches, dancing late into the night, catching up with good friends. It was like a microcosm of my whole life; I feel like I'm cramming too many things into too small a space. But there's not a single thing on that list I'd want to give up. Sunday I was too tired to do much of anything--we went raspberry picking, I taught E how to play Speed (in an effort to avoid playing either Chess or Pokemon) while everyone else was at C's grandmother's birthday party, and worked on my nature journal while he watched Ninjago, I made a pie.

At the end of the day, looking around at the post-apocalyptic landscape that is our living room, I said to C, "I wish I could take a few days off work and get the house in order."

"Or," he said, "you could just stay home on the weekend."

But I don't want to stay home on the weekend...and if I do stay home on the weekend, I don't want to spend my time getting the house in order. I already feel like I have to squeeze my entire life into two days a week. I'm not giving away those two days, too.

How about you? Have you achieved this illusive "work-life balance"? And if not, what do you give up to make it all fit in?